


The Reason Why

by Martin Iceworth (Iceworth)



Series: The Gilded Cage [2]
Category: Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York (Video Game)
Genre: (subtly) abusive relationship, Arturo being a creep, Blood Bond, Captivity, F/M, Looooots of blood, Maddyverse, One-way blood bond relationship, original character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28307778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iceworth/pseuds/Martin%20Iceworth
Summary: When Thomas Arturo's haven is breached, he's terrified that Qadir finally took the Fledgling away from him. With that fear, he's forced to acknowledge the reason why he keeps her -- even if he'd never admit it out loud.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Thomas Arturo
Series: The Gilded Cage [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931305
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	The Reason Why

**Author's Note:**

> Edited 23/2/21 to fix the formatting issues that slipped through last time.

_Beep._

“Zero six zero eight six seven, zero four zero nine five nine.”

_Bee-beep!_

Thomas pushed his glasses up his nose, adjusting the messenger bag at his hip with an elbow. His front door clicked. He pushed it open with the palm of his other hand.

The first thing he saw was the blood on the opposite wall.

He stopped. He gaped.

The blood arced across the wall and the tiles on the floor. It trailed, as if someone had been dragged around a corner and out of sight. So much blood that not even a Kindred could survive losing that much without going into torpor.

_Oh, god, oh, god —_

He breathed in. It smelled fresh. Human. Like Alexander. Small relief.

_No. No. No. They took her, they took her —_

His legs unfroze. He threw himself after the trail.

The blood led him down the hallway, covered in scuffs and hand prints — Alexander had dragged himself along the floor, seriously injured and bleeding out, marring the tiles he kept spotless. He hadn’t lasted long. Thomas was barely around the corner when he found Alexander curled up in a pool of his own blood. Silent. Unmoving. Hair plastered to his forehead by sticky red.

He could have been sleeping.

He’d followed someone. They attacked him, nicked an artery, stepped past him — and he tried to follow on his hands and knees, too light headed from blood loss to walk, going dark too quickly to go far…

Thomas thrust a hand into his bag and pulled out his gun.

(Fuck, he wasn’t a fighter. There was a reason he stuck to manipulating others, he was shit in a fight and he was only tenth generation — )

Switching off the safety, he activated Auspex, letting his vitae flood into his head and brain.

The world came to him, clamoring, and screamed its way into his senses.

The buzz of the fridge became a roar. Somebody’s heartbeat struggled a few rooms away. The tiles under his feet went from blank white slates to hyper-detailed mosaics of microscopic specks of dirt no human eye could see. He inhaled, and smelled more blood, smelled dust, smelled decay. There was another dead thing in his apartment, and something else still was bleeding profusely. Something was being dragged, gasping and whimpering, away from the kitchen towards one of the bathrooms.

Lucas. It had to be Lucas that was dying. He was the only other ghoul on duty today — who was with him? An intruder?

Her?

_Where is she where is she WHERE IS SHE —_

He didn’t need to point his gun at the empty air in the kitchen; Auspex would have warned him if someone was still there. The corpse smell was strongest here, but didn’t seem organic enough to be caused by insects and bacterial decay; it was dusty, ashy. Kindred. Sure enough, he found a Nosferatu woman crumpled behind the kitchen island. She looked like she’d been dead for weeks, but if Alexander’s body was any indication she can’t have been there long. Kindred decayed so quickly, after all. She was half a skeleton, sitting upright against a massive, body-shaped dent in the kitchen island.

A ghoul couldn’t have done that.

Good girl. She didn’t go quietly, then. Just as he’d planned. Pawn takes bishop.

 _They’d have had to have passed him on their way down they must have smuggled her past him how was he not PAYING ATTENTION WHERE IS SHE_ — 

One of the splintered hanging cabinets was covered in blood; kine blood, this time. The Nosferatu must have taught Lucas how to fly. More blood on the kitchen tiles, leading towards the bathroom, but not nearly as much as Alexander had left. No arterial wounds here. Drag marks. Stains on the carpet that would never come out. And then, the faintest smell of vitae. Not the Nossie’s. It smelled — faintly familiar. It smelled like _her_ — 

_If they hurt her I’ll fucking kill them all._ He’d come down on them with the fury of a thousand suns and burn them all twice as badly. He’d thought it was Qadir at first, finally trying to rescue his little damsel in distress, but Qadir would never have hurt her — 

Unless she fought him. And she would have. Even without the blood bond, she’d have had no choice. Lucas would have made sure of it. They wouldn’t have taken her easily — 

A wet gasp from the bathroom.

The door was ajar. Thomas kicked it open, aimed — 

“It’s okay,” she was crooning, bending over a bloodied figure in the bath tub, wrist to its mouth. “Just drink. He won’t be mad.”

A sigh of relief surged from him as he slumped against the doorway, barely having the presence of mind to click off the safety before he lowered the gun. “God,” he said, as Olivia looked up at him, as Auspex faded from his senses and the loud world returned to its normal dullness. “I thought they took you.” He closed his eyes and breathed, “Fuck.”

“They’re gone,” said Olivia, bloody wrist still to the figure’s mouth. The damage and gore made it hard to tell, but Evan’s hair wasn’t that vibrant blond. Yes, that was definitely Lucas, not Evan. Lucas looked as if his face had collected a door at mach fuck. “I think they were just doing some initial recon, they were tampering with the door. Alex surprised them when he was stepping out.”

“Stupid fucking Alexander,” Thomas muttered under his breath. He deserved the nasty surprise they’d given him for that carelessness. He shoved the gun onto the bathroom counter, dropped to his knees in front of Olivia, grabbed both sides of her face and kissed her, hard.

She made a soft, surprised noise under his lips. He’d never kissed her before. Had never felt like this before — desperate, lost, disbelieving, this can’t be happening this can’t be happening she can’t be gone — and the flood of relief he’d felt to see her there, still his, did nothing to soothe him nearly as much as kissing her did. He didn’t need to come up for air, deepening the kiss until she made soft sounds of pleasure under his mouth, until she leaned into him with soft yearning. God, why had he never done this before? Why had he never kissed her before? That was stupid. He should have been kissing her all along. She was probably bleeding on him. Didn’t matter. Fuck the jacket. He had tons of the things.

The ghoul was alive enough to make an annoyed noise, denied of his drink, and Thomas broke away to scowl at him. “If you’re well enough to roll your eyes then you’re well enough to clean up the mess.” He ignored Livya, sitting back with a colourless, yet still unmistakable blush on her face. “Get up. Clean yourself up.”

“Thomas,” said Olivia, a faint note of nervousness in her voice, which just pissed him off more. Why was she still so damn anxious around him? If he’d wanted to kill her, he’d have done it ages ago, not put it off and let her dwell in his haven for months on end out of sheer procrastination. “He’s still badly hurt, give him more time to recover.”

“The blood you gave him will do its work.” Honestly, given how nervy she could be, he was surprised she had the balls to commit the sin of feeding another Kindred’s ghoul. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed she wasn’t completely made of tissue paper, or annoyed that she had such a soft spot for ghouls.

Hell, maybe she’d fed him because she was too young to know better. It wasn’t as if Langley had taught her shit from fuck, after all. 

Olivia only been a pawn to her. She was never taught to be a queen.

Olivia grabbed a fistful of his sleeve. “What about Alex? Is he — is he okay?”

“Dead,” he said. “Throat got slit. Probably drowned in his own blood.”

Lucas took in a shuddering breath. Olivia gave Thomas puppy eyes.

He sighed and rolled his eyes again. “Call Evan and make him show up and do it, then.” He stood up. A sticky sensation distracted him; fuck, there was blood on his pants, he hadn’t even noticed he’d knelt in the mess on the floor. He crossed his arms and scowled. “We’ve got two bodies to get rid of. One is a walking Masquerade violation and is only going to get harder to clean up the more she decays. Did you recognise her?”

“The Nosferatu?” said Olivia. “The only ones I’ve ever met were Kaiser and D’Angelo, and — “

“That wasn’t either of them, no,” said Thomas. “Even if I didn’t know them both, this one was female.” The Nosferatu, Olivia had said, specifying the invader as if there’d been another — they were tampering with the door, she’d also said, they, they, they —

“Who else was with her?”

Olivia hesitated, but only for a second. “Hope.”

“Qadir wasn’t here?”

“Not that I saw.”

“He must have been the lookout, then.” Thomas hadn’t seen him. “Then they really didn’t expect confrontation. Not tonight.” He hadn’t thought the Sheriff would be clever enough to track down his haven. Damn it, damn it, damn it. He’d have to move. “Who else?”

“Nobody that I saw.”

“ _Anyone else?_ ” He put his vitae behind the question.

“No,” said Olivia. Either she’d learned to go against the blood bond and his Dominate, or she was telling the truth. “But I know what they were trying to do with the door.”

“Yes?” Thomas made an impatient gesture.

“Hope had some deepfakes,” said Olivia. At Thomas’s raised eyebrow, she said, “She can record people’s voices and get the recordings to say some new things. I think she was trying to crack the door, but then Alex happened to step out, and…”

“And she and the Nosferatu were surprised, panicked, and decided that now was their best shot now they’d blown it. They killed Alex at the door with a clean cut — not clean enough to kill him on the spot, but enough to kill him in minutes.” As Thomas spoke, Lucas whimpered and sobbed in the tub, but Thomas ignored him. “They went into the kitchen as Alex tried to find you both, probably tried to call out to warn you but his vocal chords were severed — “

Lucas sobbed again. Olivia squeezed the ghoul’s hand and glared at Thomas. “Hope appeared in front of me. Tried to talk to me. The Nosferatu — she appeared from thin air from behind me, pinned my arms to my sides. They didn’t try to hurt me, but I think they were expecting me to fight. We talked, and then — “

“What did you say?” He didn’t put Dominate behind it. She’d been truthful, so far.

“They asked me where you were,” said Olivia. “I said you were out, but…”

She hesitated. Thomas waited.

“But that you’d be back soon,” Olivia said, finally. 

He believed her. “And then?”

“I said if we were going to leave they’d better be quick, but that I’d probably try to fight at some point,” said Olivia. “Hope said, ‘oh, that won’t be a problem’ and brought out a stake…”

“Ah,” said Thomas. “That’s how they plan to get around it. Stake you, leave you in a basement somewhere for three months, then when they remove your paralysis you’d be clear headed again.” He took off his glasses and pulled a microfiber cloth out of his jacket, but it was stained with red from where Olivia’s bloody wrist had soaked through his clothing. Damn it. “They have a location in mind, clearly, and had a plan to transport. And obviously, the stake didn’t make it to your heart. Lucas intervened just in time, I take it?”

“Yep,” said Olivia. “Turned up, started screaming like a banshee and kicking the shit out of Hope.” She laughed, nervously, squeezing the silent Lucas’s hand. Thomas thought he saw a sad smile on the ghoul’s bloody face. Hmm, some of the bruising had faded already, looked like the drink Olivia had given him had done him some good. “She was taken by surprise enough that he actually got her on the ground.”

“But a ghoul’s no match for a Kindred.” Thomas slid his glasses back on.

“No,” said Olivia. “Hope sprung to her feet… shit, I’ve never seen anything like it. I knew vampires were strong — “

“Kindred, my dear.”

“I know Kindred are strong,” said Olivia, “but she full on picked him up and threw him into the cabinet. And then…” She brushed her free hand through her hair. It was the wrist she’d used to feed Lucas. It had healed already, but she left a bloody smear on her forehead. Quietly, Thomas licked the pad of his thumb, reached out and wiped it away. Olivia smiled at him. “The next thing I knew, Hope was running out of the front door, Lucas looked like hell, and the Nosferatu woman was dead. It was like she just dropped dead, something had savaged her but I don’t… don’t know what happened…”

“Mmm.” There was a bit of vitae left in her hair, but Thomas left it and tried to ignore it. He’d make her shower, later. Well, he probably didn’t need to, but the mother hen in him made him bossy when he was stressed. “Did Sophie ever teach you about the Beast?”

“Just that it was something inside us,” said Olivia. “Some sort of monster, but… she wasn’t being literal, was she?”

Thomas took her by the shoulder. “One thing that every sire, adopted or not, needs to teach their childe is that they are not human any more, Olivia,” said Thomas. “We are not humans with a medical condition. When the Embrace takes you, you become another species entirely. Kindred, now, no longer Kine. Few of us would ever admit it, but we are even more animals than the Kine are, left to the puppet strings of animal instincts. Do you think we abandon kindness and compassion simply because we just love to act like raging assholes? That we don’t miss the companionship and trust that came with being human?”

She gave him a look that seemed a little too knowing for his liking.

“We do,” said Thomas. “Few of us would ever be caught dead admitting it, but I’ve seen it in my kin plain as day. But we forsake those social bonds out of sheer necessity. We are no longer human. We are animals, now. We’re more susceptible to instincts. When the beast overcomes us, as it overcame you, we have no control over ourselves. Someone you cared about was hurt, and the Beast decided ‘fuck that shit’ and took care of the problem. Nothing you could have done to stop it.”

“Is that what you call _this_ , then?” It was clear what she meant by this. “The Beast?” Her voice was careful, but her words pointed. Ah, there was the Ventrue in her, chafing at her bond to him, probing for his limits. She’d been so meek, so cooperative, she’d never found how far she could go with him. He’d been waiting for her fangs to come out again. For the childe to retreat and for the Kindred to emerge. “Is what you’re doing to me the Beast’s fault, is it?”

“God, no,” he snorted. “The Beast is when we black out, when we frenzy, when we turn into a cornered or enraged animal. This? You, being here? I know exactly what I’m doing.“

“So why am I here, then?” He didn’t like the tone in her voice, or the critical look in her eye. Like a hunter with a trap. The look on her face told her that she’d caught the subtle shift in him, but she didn’t look away. Brave girl.

“In case you come in useful later.” He raised his eyebrows at her, but even as he said it he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“Bullshit,” she said, and ah, there was the Ventrue in her again. The corporate overlord, the shadow of long-gone kings and queens, who heard the excuse of a grovelling underling and said _not good enough_. Truth be told, it was kind of hot. If she had a few more decades of being Kindred under her belt and the self-confidence to go with it, it would have been terrifyingly erotic. “I’m completely useless to you. You’ve talked about how little Sophie taught me. I escaped and asked for help and Qadir tracked down your haven because of me. Until I went to Qadir, nobody in the Camarilla knew that you were the true power in New York, but I went and blew your plans right open. You could’ve killed me a hundred times by now, but you never did. You should’ve killed me when you killed Sophie — “

He recovered enough to say, “When _Adelaide_ — “

“When _you_ killed Sophie,” said Olivia, and he couldn’t help the smirk that rose. There was the boardroom boss again. “Adelaide was following your orders.” Then she scowled, lifting her chin. “Don’t distract me. You should’ve killed me when you killed Sophie, but you didn’t. You kept me around even when I’ve been nothing but a liability to you. Why?”

“My dear,” he said, looking down at his bloodstained jacket. There was no point to it, the whole thing would have to be chucked, but he found himself picking off lint anyway. “Are you saying I should leave you out for the sun?”

_“Answer the question.”_

He opened his mouth, then paused. “Wait.”

She blinked at him.

She covered her mouth. “Oh, shit — “

“Did you just try to Dominate me?” He laughed.

“I’m sorry, I — “

“Cute,” he said, covering his smile with a hand. She might not have gone red, but he recognised a blush when he saw one.

“It just happened!” she said. “I’m sorry, I — “

He laughed at her again. “Come on, my dear,” he said. “You go to the kitchen. Get some blood in you.” He knelt by the bath tub again, bit his wrist, offered the wound to the ghoul in the tub. “I’ll finish feeding this one.” Lucas reached for him. “You did well, Lucas. Thank you. You did exactly what I expected you to.”

Lucas gave him the kind of enraptured, blood bound smile Thomas saw from Livya all the time, and then began to drink.

Olivia didn’t move. Thomas supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.

“You still didn’t answer the question,” she said, quietly. “Why do you keep me around?”

“Mmm.” He mulled over what to tell her. “I suppose at first I thought I’d see if you could come in useful at all. You might have had no discretion, but you don’t give yourself enough credit, either. Every task Sophie gave to you, you accomplished. Adelaide reported your exact movements to me, and some of them were quite impressive. You met Torque, then arranged a meeting between him and Sophie Langley. You tracked down Kaiser, of all people. You mouthed off at Callihan and lived to tell about it.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “I don’t know why you think you’re so useless. You’re a childe that doesn’t know much of our kind, yes. But you’re resourceful. If I turned you out in the streets now and told you not to come back until you did something for me, you’d make it happen. You have your ways of doing things that’re simply remarkable. What isn’t to admire? I see so much potential in you.”

“But you haven’t had me do anything for you,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “Mind like a steel trap, mmm?”

“Thomas,” she said. “ _Why do you keep me here?_ ”

She wasn’t going to drop it, was she?

“Look,” he said. He glanced aside. Watched Lucas drink. He had the awful feeling that if Olivia had her mouth on his neck right now he’d be singing like a bird. “What do you know about my clan?”

“Uh,” said Olivia. “I know you’re Toreador?”

“Yes.”

“They’re artists,” said Olivia. “You’re artists. Struck by — “ she paused, made a face, then continued as if whatever thought she was having hadn’t occurred to her. Ah, right, he supposed he could see the unfortunate and somewhat creepy implications in what she’d been about to say. Struck by beauty. He smirked. “I just remember Sophie sometimes standing at the window, absolutely in rapture at the city lights.”

“Mmm.” He paused. “Cold.”

“Cold?”

“Cold. You need to get warmer.”

“Is that wrong?”

“In the case of why I have you here? Yes.”

“Uh.” She ran a hand through her hair, frowning. “I honestly don’t know anything more about the Toreador. Is there more to it than that?”

"A lot more,” said Thomas. “There’s more to us than our weakness. Our weakness is yes, we are easily in rapture of what we perceive as beauty. Didn’t I tell you about the rapture I find in the beauty of connections, in manipulation, in power? It doesn’t always have to be physical beauty. I find fate beautiful — when it feels like being generous, anyway.” Olivia was fidgeting, now. Even with the blood bond she wasn’t one for his speeches. “But every clan has more to it than its weakness. Tell me, in what ways have you noticed yourself changing? What did Olivia the Kindred notice about herself after emerging from the chrysalis of her Embrace?”

“I thought any way I’d changed was because of… well… all this,” said Olivia. “Due to being ripped away from my life. Running around after Sophie. Sophie dying.” She frowned, looking down.

“Some of it, I don’t doubt,” said Thomas. “But what ways have you noticed yourself change?”

“Don’t laugh,” said Olivia. “But I feel like I take shit less.”

“I wasn’t going to, my dear.” He was completely serious.

“I mean,” said Olivia. “You boss me around all the time. When you’re here I just want to please you because of the blood bond. But when it’s not as powerful as it is, I feel like… I don’t know. Like I can do anything. Like I should be able to and anything that gets in my way needs to fall in line. I used to never want to bother anyone but now I just boss them around and don’t even think twice about it until I’ve already done it. It just feels like… like…” She stood up, then, opened a cupboard under the sink. Pulled out a washcloth, rinsed it under the tap. “Like it’s just normal. That they’re there to do whatever I want them to do. It makes me feel like some kind of monster.”

“We both are, my dear,” said Thomas.

“No, I mean, like,” Olivia came back, then, started gently dabbing at the blood on Lucas’s face. Thomas took away his wrist; Lucas made a sound of disappointment, but he’d gotten more vitae than he usually did and Thomas was feeling a little hungry after the ghoul had taken so much from him. He’d need to hunt first thing the next evening. He sealed his wound with his tongue as Olivia talked. “I need to remember the human, to see people as people. But sometimes I completely forget that and just tell Lucas or Evan or Alexander to do something like they exist to serve me. I hate it. That’s not who I am.”

“That,” said Thomas, “isn’t a Kindred thing.”

“It’s not?”

“It’s a Ventrue thing,” said Thomas. “The blood makes Ventrue natural leaders. In good ways, and in bad. The world is yours, you own it, everyone else just lives in it. Sometimes I’ve noticed you catch yourself after acting like you’re the queen of my Haven. It’s quite entertaining to watch.” And hot, but he wasn’t going to say that out loud.

Damn, but he really wanted to kiss her again…

“What I will tell you about my clan,” said Thomas, “is that Toreador are prone to… certain mannerisms.”

“What? Kidnapping people?”

“Mmm, no. Might you let me finish?” When she said nothing, he gently teased her, “You did want me to answer the question, I believe? Perhaps stop pontificating and entertain your inquiry? Cease my monologue and consider your endless queries? Maybe I’ll eventually get around to it — ”

“Thomas.” She glared at him again.

Smirking, he said, “All I’ll tell you is that you won’t be here forever. We are functionally immortal. Maybe it’ll be that one day I will meet my final death. Maybe your white knight in shining armour — “ ah, how satisfying that embarrassed look on her face was! “ — will rescue you. Maybe I’ll simply get bored and let you go. Either way, one day you’ll learn more about the Toreador than you know today.”

“I won’t die here?”

“No,” said Thomas. “Why would you? I mean you no harm, and the Blood Bond will ensure you’re never difficult enough that I’d have to. You might be here for two hundred years, but you’ll survive. You’ll be gone, one day, one way or another. When you do, you’ll learn more about the Toreador. And when you do — well. Perhaps it’ll come with some insight. If you’re half as smart as I think you are, it will. And you’ll realise you understood my actions after all. Now…” he stood back up and looked down at his jacket. “I really need to change this, now you’ve bled on it.”

Olivia shrugged with only a little bit of sheepishness.

“And get Evan to deal with the bodies,” said Thomas. “… and all the blood. Ugh. This place is a mess.”

Olivia’s smile faded. She reached for Lucas’s hand again. Guiltily.

“Chin up, my dear,” he said, taking the wash cloth from her and wiping up the now-smooth skin on his left wrist and hand. “Death of mortals is something you’ll get used to. Don’t condemn the lion for its reaction to the gazelle’s fate. You’re not human any more. Look after the ghoul if that makes you feel any better, but don’t expect yourself to be always like this. You won’t be a childe forever, and it’s only childer that care about the lives of their ghouls and Kine.” He gave her a wry smile. “The human will go. Let her leave you without fighting. Take it from me, that’s not a battle that will bring any glory or renown.”

Olivia bowed her head.

Thomas hesitated.

Then, quietly, he added, “Livya.”

She glanced up at him.

“I was Embraced in 1978,” he said. “Forty two years ago. I might be old enough I’ve left my humanity behind. But not so old I have forgotten it completely. Mourn. You’ll need to.”

“So does Lucas,” she said, quietly.

“Ghouls will do as they will.” Thomas took his gun from the side. “You eventually get to the stage where you stop caring about their feelings. Humans have so many of them. They get tiring. Life hurtles by them so quickly and they’ve gone through a thousand stages of grief and mourned a million dead and you’ve barely processed which decade you’re in. And I’m not even so old that a Kine born in the forties, like me, can’t still be alive.” He gave her a little wave. “Look after him. I know you like doing that. But don’t hate yourself a few decades from now when you’re tired of that, too. It’ll come. It always does. I don’t know how those Elders stay sane. One second a small human they know is mourning a parent, the next it’s mourning a grandchild. Grief, grief, grief. Everywhere, every few seconds there’s another death. Do you think that abandoning empathy for our old species is another thing we do out of spite?”

She didn’t answer.

“No,” he said. “It’s just part of accepting who we are, who we’ve become, what we’ve become.” He turned his back on her. “Just part of growing up.”

Drifting into the kitchen — Auspex on, just in case Hope had brought any other accomplices that remained hidden in his haven, although he was quite sure by now there was no threat — he fished his phone from a pocket and texted Evan. _Come to the penthouse. Now. There’s been an incident._ He’d need to fake a police report just in case, call in a few favours to get rid of the bodies… and add some more security on the front door. Maybe moving was prudent, but moving _now_ would just be careless. Not while Qadir and his ilk were watching. He’d have Evan comb the atrium for bugs, and he’d check for them himself each night before he entered. The passcode was more complicated than Hope could decipher, and he doubted she’d think to use Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth and death dates as one. She probably didn’t even know who he was.

Ugh.

Frank Lloyd Wright had been a shitty architect anyway.

He stepped into the living room, with its picturesque view of Brooklyn. The Statue of Liberty. The buildings. Two white leather couches, at a right angle to each other — one he knew that Lucas liked to lounge in from time to time, but cast a blind eye to to keep his pet happy. He didn’t keep Lucas around for his professionalism or work ethic, he kept him around because he’d fight to defend Olivia and once any intruders fought back, it would stop any compliance Olivia might have with them. Today, that theory had been tested, and it had held up well.

And she’d thought he felt threatened because she’d sassed him. _Ha_. As if sass would achieve anything. He had little doubt that if she tried, she’d know exactly how to get under his skin, but the power of the blood bond made her avoid that at all costs, even if she didn’t know it. She knew his weaknesses damn well. She knew where to poke. She just chose not to.

Thomas’s shoe stuck slightly to the carpet as he moved towards a couch. He looked down. He’d left blood on the rug. Damn it. That would need to be cleaned up, too.

He shucked off his shoes, left them on the tiles. Took off his jacket and left it on top while he was at it, along with the gun. Ugh, his shirt was bloody too. Didn’t matter. He briefly considered taking it off and lounging around bare-chested, but the idea of Olivia walking in on him like that filled him with an inexplicable embarrassment. He had an image to maintain, thank you very much, and looking like a blue-collar worker wasn’t it. It was a Toreador thing. Of course it was a Toreador thing. That was what Toreadors did — they obsessed over image. They obsessed over aesthetic.

They got emotional.

They got attached.

To humans, ghouls, childer. Other Kindred. Liabilities that were better off a pile of dust in the dawn, or corpses made bereft of their heads by serial killers with garden shears.

He knew why he kept her, on the quieter nights where he didn’t believe the lies he told himself, but he didn’t know why he saved her. He shouldn’t have. She was right. Qadir knew he controlled New York, now, and that would never have happened if he’d just given Adelaide the command to kill the Fledgling, too.

He’d never even hesitated. He’d just offered Olivia his wrist. It had been an impulse he hadn’t even questioned.

_“See, that’s the thing about trusting your instincts. Sometimes it’s better to take a step back and take your time before making a call.”_

Hadn’t he told her that himself, the night they first spoke to each other?

So much for that advice.

And yet, fate clearly had other things in mind. He wasn’t quite sure what it wanted, yet, but… he’d work with it. He always did, now. That was the only time it worked with him too.

Instead of abandoning his shirt, or bothering to get a clean one, he simply sank back into one of the white leather couches, the view of Brooklyn and the water to his right. Governors Island. Ellis, too, if he got closer to the window to look, although it was down to his right and he couldn’t see it from here. The island where he accidentally adopted a childe he didn’t know what to do with.

His phone buzzed. _On my way, sir_ , said Evan.

Briefly, Thomas considered typing, _Alexander’s dead_ , but — well. Phones were so insecure.

Poor Lucas. Every kine that lived long enough lost their father eventually, if they ever had one. Few of them had the misfortune to see it up close and bloody. Lucas’s work would suffer the next few weeks, or even months, but Livya was home more often than Thomas was and she was patient. She’d probably help. Childer were like that with ghouls. They saw themselves in them, their old humanity. The life they’d left behind.

He hadn’t coped well with it either.

He closed the message notification and gently tossed his phone onto the glass coffee table.

He sat back. Listened to the sounds of Olivia fussing over the young ghoul. Listened to his sobbing. Listened to the beep of the front door, later, as Evan came in, and the cursing that came with it.

He watched the empty sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for any formatting errors, I have to redo all the paragraphs when uploading here, eugh.


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